Measuring Engagement – A White Paper

Why is engagement important?

Engagement, and how to measure it, has become one of the hot topics in the research
world over the past few years. In an increasingly cluttered advertising environment,
understanding how consumers both engage with - and react to – different media is
becoming ever more important, particularly in understanding how these experiences
influence purchase decisions.

The relationship that a user has with particular media may actually influence how
receptive they are to the advertising contained within; with the premise being that the
more engaged a user is with particular media, the more effective the advertising
contained within that particular media will be 1 .

By understanding the experiences or feelings that consumers are undergoing when in

contact with different media, it is possible to develop a series of metrics which will
provide an overall measure of engagement and, be default, an indication of how well
the advertising contained within that medium will be.

Measuring engagement in an increasingly complex media landscape

Trying to understand this relationship is particularly complicated in the online world;

where consumers may visit certain sites very frequently and spend considerable time on
these sites, yet not notice any advertising. In certain circumstances, the advertising
may even be seen as a hindrance, distracting them from the main purpose of their
online activity. As such, volume alone (frequency of visiting and time spent) cannot be
a measure of engagement; it is the quality of the time spent on the site, and
perceptions of the experience that contribute to overall engagement and receptivity to
the advertising contained on that site.

To further complicate matters, consumers are increasingly media multi-tasking,

consuming more than one type of media at the same time. Recent research from
Ofcom 2 indicated that on average consumers squeezed 8 hours and 48 minutes of
media activity into 7 hours and 5 minutes (increasing to 9 hours 32 minutes of activity
into 6 hours 35 minutes of media consumption amongst 16-24 year olds).

The same research highlighted (detailed in chart 1) that two fifths of time consumers
spend on a computer is on communicating with other people; namely e-mail, social
networking and instant messaging, with activities on computers or mobile phones most
likely to be undertaken at the same time as other media activities

1
Calder & Malthouse: ‘Media Engagement and Advertising Effectiveness’
2
The Communications Market 2010: Key findings of the consumer’s digital day
Chart 1: Proportion of Computer Use by Activity:

Understanding the online environment – and the impact of site content on

engagement

The rapid growth of social networking sites such as Facebook has grabbed headlines –
and new advertising opportunities as the number of users increased dramatically.
However, motivations for using social networking sites are very different to those
motivators for using portals, or other sites and the type of engagement is quite
different.

To understand these differences, and how this might impact on advertising

engagement, the AOP (Association of Online Publishers) commissioned GfK NOP to
conduct a research project to examine engagement levels for content sites (that is,
websites for which content is produced specifically) versus those for portals and social
network sites and how this might impact on advertising perceptions. On face value,
both portals and social networking sites have ‘engaged’ users in terms of dwell time and
frequency, but how do content sites perform?

Mirroring the approach taken by the OPA (Online Publishers Association) in the US, the
AOP project did not start out with a pre-conceived measure of engagement but instead
asked respondents to rate particular site types on a battery of different image
dimensions. Detailed statistical analysis was conducted on the results to identify
different dimensions associated with each site type – together with related advertising
measures. This resulted in the identification of 5 core website factors: Trustworthy &
Reliable, Opinion Leader & Authoritative, Entertaining & Engaging, Unique & Up-to-date
and Community , and 3 advertising factors; Creates awareness, Trust and Response
Trigger.
Interestingly, it was the metric of trust and reliability which was more likely to drive a
response to the advertising – and one area in which social network sites are still to
prove themselves as the chart below illustrates. Consumers who particularly trusted the
sites they used were more likely to trust the brands advertising on these sites and, as a
result, more likely to respond to the advertising on these sites

In Summary

Site engagement is a complex relationship and cannot be measured by reach and

frequency alone. Consumers’ attitudes towards a website, motivations for using and
overall opinion of the site also need to be taken into account. Trust is an extremely
important metric for driving advertising response and is yet to be strongly associated
with social networks
For more information please contact:

Christine Connor
Research Director
GfK NOP Media
+44 (0) 207 890 9088
Christine.connor@gfk.com

Tim Cain
Head of Research & Insight
AOP
+44 (0) 207 400 7510
Tim.cain@ukaop.org.uk